The Orbis

The leaders of the Republican party are busy pretending to be the last bulwark protecting true, unwavering morality from a tidal wave of liberal, flip-flopping, post-modern, multicultural, effeminate degeneracy and moral decay (all stemming, so they seem to believe, from some mysterious kind of ray emitted by Bill Clinton).

In his speech for the Republican National Convention in New York City, Zell Miller summed up the Republicans’ self-understanding best, when, comparing Bush to Kerry, he said of Bush that “He is not a slick talker but he is a straight shooter. And where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.” Democrats and liberals, the Republicans claim, just talk the moral talk, manufacture an image of morality, but Republicans actually do something to protect it.

The facts, however, reveal that it is the far-right Republicans for whom creating the appearance of morality trumps realizing it. In the case of torture, their cavalier treatment of morality is egregious. As recent testimony in Washington for the “’Citizen Hearing’ on Status of Civil Rights & Liberties Post 9-11” (October 13) has reminded us, the Bush administration’s main purpose in creating the Guantanamo interrogation centers was to operate outside of the protection of US law, so that torture could take place with impunity. Guantanamo reveals that what the administration opposes is not the act of torture, but rather its taking place where it could be reported and prosecuted.

Bush tells us again and again that his war on terror is “hard work.” Part of the “hard work” this administration has been doing is striving to legalize “extraordinary rendition,” that is, ‘outsourcing’ torture by shipping our prisoners to countries where torture is the norm. As one administration official put it, “We don’t kick the shit out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the shit out of them.” We are told that the country in question would have to give lip service to human rights before the victim was tortured, but that is hardly reassuring. Again, the problem for the administration is not the act of torture, but rather the chance that someone might see it where they could do something about it.

The calculated use of mercenaries (or “contractors”) at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere also rests on similar motives. What makes these contractors particularly valuable to the administration is that they are difficult to hold accountable for their actions; they are not members of the military and occupy a shadowy zone in international law. What is essential is not that torture be prevented, but rather that no one be held accountable.

Rumsfeld’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee made this attitude especially clear. He did make apologies, pay lip service to righting wrongs: “Certainly anyone who recommended the kind of behavior that I have seen depicted in those photos needs to be brought to justice. [...] Our country had an obligation to treat [the detainees] right, to treat them as human beings. We didn’t do that. That was wrong.” But then he let his true feelings be known: “My worry today is that there’s some other procedure or some other habit that’s 20th century, that is normal process, ‘the way we’ve always done it,’ quote/unquote, a peacetime approach to the world, and there’s some other process that we haven’t discovered yet that needs to be modernized to the 21st century, that needs to recognize the existence, in this case, for example, of digital cameras.” Removing what Zell Miller calls “slick talk” — When torturing detainees, be very careful about letting people take pictures of it. Once more, the problem isn’t the act of torture, but disseminating pictures of it.

One could imagine constructing an argument that leaving this administration’s destruction of transparency, elimination of accountability and complete disregard for responsibility unchecked would lead to horrible transgressions of human rights, perhaps even crimes against humanity. But no “slippery slope” argument need be made here. For the fact of the matter is that these transgressions and crimes have already occurred, and are still occurring.

Zell Miller tells us that, for Republicans in the administration, “deeds mean a lot more than words.” In the second presidential debate, Bush has repeatedly charged that Kerry’s criticisms of the war effort in Iraq hurt morale among the troops: “I don’t see how you can lead troops if you say it’s the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time.” On closer inspection, however, Bush is attempting to claim that his actual mismanagement of the war in Iraq (which includes the torture of Iraqis) will somehow do less damage to the troops’ morale than Kerry’s talking about that mismanagement. What finally becomes undeniable after reviewing this list of evasions is that for Republicans, talk of morality means a lot more than any moral deeds.

Our leaders pretend to be lone protectors of morality from corrosion and relativism. Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the rest, however, reveal that this administration does not in fact recognize the intrinsic value of human rights — and thus of morality — at all, but believes instead that human beings should only be treated as such if there is a threat of sanctions once the torture is discovered. Thus, these presumed guardians of morality and Christian values do not recognize the spirit of the law, only the letter, and even then, only when being watched. They cannot be trusted to recognize the simplest, most basic elements of common humanity, let alone respect the truth, resist the pull of greed or suppress their lust for power. If morality needs to be protected from anyone, it needs to be protected from its supposed protectors.

E. C. Emmer is an instructor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University in Brooklyn, New York.

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